Earlier today, I served as the “young woman’s voice” in a panel of local experts at a Girl Scouts speaking event. One question for the panel was something to the effect of, "Should parents read their daughter’s texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?"

I was surprised when the first panelist answered the question as if it were about cyberbullying. The adult audience nodded sagely as she spoke about the importance of protecting children online.

I reached for the microphone next. I said, “As far as reading your child’s texts or logging into their social media profiles, I would say 99.9% of the time, do not do that.”

Looks of total shock answered me. I actually saw heads jerk back in surprise. Even some of my fellow panelists blinked.

Everyone stared as I explained that going behind a child’s back in such a way severs the bond of trust with the parent. When I said, “This is the most effective way to ensure that your child never tells you anything,” it was like I’d delivered a revelation.

It’s easy to talk about the disconnect between the old and the young, but I don’t think I’d ever been so slapped in the face by the reality of it. It was clear that for most of the parents I spoke to, the idea of such actions as a violation had never occurred to them at all.

It alarms me how quickly adults forget that children are people.

Apparently people are rediscovering this post somehow and I think that’s pretty cool! Having experienced similar violations of trust in my youth, this is an important issue to me, so I want to add my personal story:

Around age 13, I tried to express to my mother that I thought I might have clinical depression, and she snapped at me “not to joke about things like that.” I stopped telling my mother when I felt depressed.

Around age 15, I caught my mother reading my diary. She confessed that any time she saw me write in my diary, she would sneak into my room and read it, because I only wrote when I was upset. I stopped keeping a diary.

Around age 18, I had an emotional breakdown while on vacation because I didn’t want to go to college. I ended up seeing a therapist for - surprise surprise - depression.

Around age 21, I spoke on this panel with my mother in the audience, and afterwards I mentioned the diary incident to her with respect to this particular Q&A. Her eyes welled up, and she said, “You know I read those because I was worried you were depressed and going to hurt yourself, right?”

TL;DR: When you invade your child’s privacy, you communicate three things:

You do not respect their rights as an individual.

You do not trust them to navigate problems or seek help on their own.

You probably haven’t been listening to them.

Information about almost every issue that you think you have to snoop for can probably be obtained by communicating with and listening to your child.

My paremnts actually had a pretty neat compromise with me about my email account as a tween - they had a sealed envelope with my username and password that they could use if I disappeared. (look, my mom was really paranoid about the internet, okay.)

that’s not to say my mom hasn’t done other upsetting privacy-invading things (who the fuck googles their adult childrens’ personal emails???), but on this one thing I think my dad happened on a pretty good compromise between privacy and security.

I think one of the narratives that fucked me up the most is the heart-eyes, instantaneous, smacks-you-upside-the-head, “I was never sexually attracted to/interested in sex with anyone until the moment I met you” trope.

It’s a device used to underscore the inevitability or necessity of sexuality in close relationships, it outright erases asexual and nonsexual people and it invalidates any meaningful friendships/romances they might have.

The idea that truly loving someone means becoming interested in them sexually is toxic and destructive. It leads to a constant barrage of “maybe you haven’t met The Right Person yet!” and a deeply-embedded fear that if someone doesn’t adhere to a standard sexual relationship model, they are inherently not good enough for their partners/friends, they are broken, and they will spend their lives alone because that magic switch didn’t suddenly flip to “sexual with sex drive!” upon meeting a significant person.

This also brainwashes sexuals into expecting asexual/nonsexual people to automatically change if they express interest or love for someone else. It can make those friends or partners wonder why they have failed to inspire sexual desire/attraction in the other person, when everything else seems to mesh well. It can lead to accusations: You must not really love me, then! I’m not good enough for you!

It is harmful to people on all sides of this equation. Do not accept this shitty, lazy trope… and for god’s sake, don’t write with it.

on the flip side, don’t forget about demisexuals and grey-a asexuals whom this can actually be kind of true for - but regardless, the point stands about the toxicity of this trope as currently employed by so many writers, so if you’re going to use this trope to give demisexual representation, use it with care.

Blaine takes a job as Music Director at a Unitarian Universalist church to pay for grad school. Kurt is uncomfortable with this but finds his own way of fitting it into their lives. A story of liberal religion, complex relationship negotiation, family, music, marriage and a year in the lives of Kurt and Blaine.

August 2016-July 2017.

——

Reposting my magnum opus, Singing the Journey, for the Old Glee Fic Fest. And hey, if you read it (or re-read it) and want to chat, drop a note in my Ask. I love talking about this ‘verse, and about Unitarian Universalism.

I haven’t been able to re-read this since I first read it, and I mean that in the best way possible - it touched me that deeply and in a way no other story ever has.

That’s not hyperbole.

I was in tears for most of it because it struck something so deep inside of me, something I haven’t been able to really reach myself for years, likely because of my struggles with my depression.

I was born and raised UU, and for a while I even dreamed of becoming a minister - but I haven’t been to church in years now, because just the thought of feeling so deeply again is overwhelming and seemingly impossible to withstand.

This story - this beautifully, beautifully written story - let me experience my faith again. That’s how real it is.

wintercreek's story is about growing up and into yourself and your adult life - and more than that, how sacredness comes in many forms and how you don't necessarily need to look for it or even identify it to be changed by it.

I just.

There aren’t words for what this story means to me, not really, so I’ll leave you with this entreaty to read it for yourself:

Come, come, whoever you areWorshiper, wanderer, lover of leavingOurs is no caravan of despairCome, yet again come